Retroexposure

Chapter 24 - St. Patrick's and Snow

Monday 17th March 2008 8:56am
Happy St. Patrick's Day! A day where the Irish don't need a reason to get pissed! Come to think of it the Irish don't need a reason anyway! I tell you now, if I had enough cash, I'd be going down to the Irish pub in town today and have a good, cold Guinness! I don't drink that usually of course, but today is an exception. Paddy's day is probably the only time I would drink a Guinness. I can remember the last time that Dad, Mum and I went to the Irish pub in town on St. Patrick's Day. 'Sardines in a can' is an ideal description of what it was like in the pub, you could barely move an inch! Fortunately we did find a space for Mum to at least sit down. Dad and I remained standing. Mum and Dad both had a Guinness, but I could only have a lager Shandy. The perils of being under 18! I did have a crafty swig of Mum's Guinness, but I didn't like it. I described it as cold coffee. Rank cold coffee! Obviously, as I've got older, I've learnt to appreciate Guinness, but on that day, it just didn't appeal at all.
It's ridiculous. Dad's been gone 10 years, and it's only now, today, that I realised that one thing I've missed out on, father-son bonding-wise, is going for my first legal pint! Sure, I did have that pint with Mum, but it's not the same as going for a drink with your old man. Come on, James! Pull yourself together! Irish men don't weep over daft memories like that. Who cares! I'm half Irish; I'll make an exception!
I have finally read that last Dan Brown novel, Angels and Demons. Technically it was his first novel, but when I bought all his books, I read them out of order. Come to think of it, I think I've read them in reverse chronological order! (Note: I hadn't actually. Digital Fortress was written in 1998.) I'd bought The Da Vinci Code after reading about its controversial story in the media. Because this made Dan Brown famous, and infamous in certain circles, I also made the conscious choice to get the rest of his books too. Deception Point, Digital Fortress, and of course, Angels and Demons. I read Brown's last three novels in quick succession, but because of how heavy and into religion The Da Vinci Code was, I decided not to read Angels. I've got to say though, I'm now glad I finally got round to it! It was an awesome novel! I'm looking forward to his next one, whenever that comes out! Dan Brown and Stephen King are definitely my literary heroes. The next book I'm going to read is King's classic novel Christine. I've seen the film, so it'll help when imagining the characters. In all honesty, that's why I like Stephen King. I've seen many films that have been adapted from his novels, so it makes reading them a lot more interesting! The next novels I want to get are Carrie, Firestarter, It and The Shining. If the films are anything to go by, then the books should be amazing! 9:52am

Saturday 22nd March 2008 11:18am
It's been a pretty uneventful week hence the reason I haven't left an entry since Monday. I went to the Leicester Mercury's Jobsfair at the Walker's Stadium on Wednesday, and didn't find it that productive really. The highlight of the day would have to be blagging a free matchday programme from the football stadium's megastore! I didn't have the cash on me to get the programme, and all I wanted was just the squad numbers of the players. They didn't have a sheet to give me, so a member of staff just gave me a programme free of charge! Now if it was one that was a few months old, then I'd have been more than happy with that, but he only went and gave me the programme from the last home game. I certainly wasn't expecting that!
　
The latter part of the week has been taken up with Easter services at Church. Also the weather has taken a turn for the worse over the last few days. Yesterday, Good Friday, we had heavy rain and it was very dark and cloudy. Coincidentally the storm's darkest hour happened to be during the Good Friday service. The bible says that on the day Jesus died the sky turned dark for three hours. Well that was freakily and literally true yesterday! I did my annual turn by reading the 'others' part during the Passion reading. Only at this time of year is the Gospel read out like a movie script; one person is the narrator, one person reads the speaking parts that isn't Jesus, the priest reads the Jesus lines and the congregation reads out the crowd parts. Only on Good Friday though, on Palm Sunday, the person reading the 'Others' parts also reads out the crowd parts as well.
J has been ringing me quite frequently from Australia. I'm chuffed that she's keeping in touch, of course I am, but how must her fiancé be feeling? Over the phone he appears to be fine with it, but I can't tell. I don't want to be the spanner in their well-oiled machine, especially if I don't know anything about it.
I've also been getting to know another girl who happens to live up in Scotland. Why is it that the girls I get to know and like, live miles and miles away? Can't I find anyone locally? Oh well, it's only flirting via text message, so it's not too bad, I guess. 11:40am
　
Sunday 23rd March 2008 8:26am
♫"I'm dreaming of a white.... Easter!!"♫
Talk about surreal! Mum wakes me up to a snow-covered scene that's remnant of a Christmas card scene. Easter is usually full of the joys of Spring. Daffodils, fluffy bunny rabbits, you know.... Spring! I took Sven out for his walk. Usually he's a fine-weather dog, and doesn't really like to be in the rain, even though his coat is twice as waterproof as mine, but he was in his element this morning! He loved it. It must be his genetically bred natural instinct that kicked in! Apparently we were so long on our walk, Mum joked that she was getting ready to send out a search party!
Yesterday, during the day, we had several snow flurries, but that was mixed with hail and sleet, so the snow didn't lie. Talk about a different story today!
Looking out of the window, the temperature must have gone up a degree or two as everything is beginning to look rather wet! If the snow is going to continue to cause problems over the next couple of days, it needs to snow hard and fast now. I'm talking blizzard conditions! Although saying that, I don't want it to wreck my signing on time on Tuesday. I'm thinking I may have to leave even earlier than 9am on Tuesday! And I've got my appointment with L as well at the probation office for what is hopefully the last time. What a way to end the tenure!! 8:45am

12:28pm
How disappointing! Less than four hours later, and you'd be hard pressed to see that it had indeed been snowing! Short but sweet! Can't see us having any more snow now. Oh well, it was good while it lasted! 12:30pm

Thursday 27th March 2008 11:53pm
I've just sat through 20 of the most embarrassing minutes of TV in my life! Mum and I had been watching The Bill from earlier tonight, but when it was over the first thing we saw that was on, was The Girl's Guide to 21st Century Sex. And what was the segment that was on? Three men were volunteering to use different contraptions to increase the sizes of their erect penises. What a nice thing to see on television while you're sat three feet from your own mother (!) And it gets worse. The next segment was all about tips on how to get the guy to give better cunnilingus. Now that I did find interesting! I'll try and remember those tips for the future!! The next segment was all about Thailand being the best place to go if you get your penis chopped off. Hell hath no fury like a Taiwanese woman scorned! A man spoke about how his wife almost chopped his off with a pair of scissors. The doctors reattached it and he was saved, luckily, but what makes the story bizarre, more so than it already sounds, is that the man took his wife back after it happened! Is the guy totally nuts?? Sorry, sweetheart, if that was done to me, that woman would be long gone!
Television is so sex obsessed these days. You just can't get away from it. Reality shows, documentaries, soap operas and even nature programmes. One programme in particular is Zoo Days. It appears as though this new series is 80% based on the breeding habits of all the animals in the zoo. Maybe that is what Chester Zoo is: a breeding zoo. But what is hysterical is when the programme shows the zookeepers getting all excited when animals mate! One zookeeper even stopped what she was doing and sprinted to the enclosure where two kimono dragons were getting friendly. I guess the only reason I'm moaning about it, is because I'm not getting any of it!
Friday 28th March 2008 12:15am

Sunday 30th March 2008 8am (BST)
Yeah, that's right, it's now British Summer Time again! It only feels like yesterday when we put the clocks back. Now we've put them forward again. So that's five months of wintertime and seven months of summertime. Sounds good to me! Of course, I'm babbling completely because I'm feeling completely shattered! I didn't get to sleep last night till 4am, and I woke 35 mins ago. After this, it's church as normal, and then....well I'm not sure! There's this thing that's happening this afternoon that a friend invited Mum and I to. Thing is, Mum tried to cancel last night, and we haven't heard from the friend to confirm she heard the message Mum left on her answer machine. We were both invited, but as I didn't really know what I was being invited to, I wanted to pull out anyway using my sleep apnoea as an excuse. After genuinely having a very restless night, it won't be an excuse after all! 8:10am
11:36am
I'm annoyed with myself. A couple at church were celebrating their diamond-wedding anniversary by having their marriage vows renewed. I know one of their daughters and grandchildren, so spontaneously, without really thinking, I offered to take some photos for them on their camera. And I cocked things up! Everything was happening so quickly, and I couldn't work out how to use the digital camera. So I think I took a couple of photos, but not one of them was that good really. In fact they were shit! I apologised afterward and then went outside to mope and kick myself basically! Have I lost my touch? Have I lost my nerve? Or was I too spontaneous, by stupidly offering to do a task with equipment I hadn't seen before? I think I'll go with option C! 11:44am
4:37pm
I'm sure Sven's trying to kill me! I'd taken the dog for his walk, and on the way home he was happy enough to walk beside me with his lead trailing. He walked alongside me all the way to the front door; I'd even turned the key and opened the door, to let us in. However, he decided that he wanted to go back to the park to carry on sniffing around something that had caught his attention ten minutes earlier. So I gave chase to try and catch up with him, forgetting to shout to Mum that I'd left the front doors wide open. I was convinced that she'd heard my key in the lock anyway, and come to the door to shut it. I ran after Sven who crossed the road regardless of traffic. (He's not a very road-savvy dog, unfortunately.) As he made it to the park area, I was in two minds as to whether or not to turn back to the house to shut the door or to go and fetch Sven. I chose the latter as I was sure that Mum would've come to the door and seen it standing wide open for all and sundry to see what we keep on a hallway table!
I sprinted across the park, slipping and sliding across the very wet and boggy grass. I caught up with Sven as he had returned to the area that had caught his attention. I grabbed his lead and dragged him back across the park out the way we came in. I forced Sven to run alongside, as I wasn't sure if Mum would've been by the door or not. As I reached the cut-through, I could see that she wasn't at the door. I'd been gone four minutes. Plenty of time for an opportunist ...whatever... seeing as I'd left the door wide open. I ran up the road, we're on a relatively steep hill, even down to the park! So I was struggling to catch my breath, my heart in my throat, practically, and my lungs screaming in pain.
Even as I write this, I've got pains in the upper right side of my chest, struggling to take a really deep breath.
Anyway, the punch line to the story is that Mum was too engrossed in watching an episode of the BBC comedy Allo, Allo! She said that she thought she heard the door open, but convinced herself that she was just hearing things, and carried on watching TV!! As for me, an hour and a half later, and I've just about caught my breath back. Now I'm going for hopefully a relaxing bath!! 5:03pm

Monday 31st March 2008 9:40am
♫ What a difference a day makes. Twenty-four little hours. ♫
How appropriate are those lyrics? Twenty-four hours ago, the weather was fantastic. It was sunny in the morning and it remained sunny all day. It was still very wet under foot when taking Sven for a walk, but it was still bright, and actually felt like summer too. Today, however, it's the same old miserable looking day. Cloudy, dull... you know...miserable! 9:52am